Facts and Opinions

I think that we're surrounded by facts too much of the time. Like the picture above, facts seem to have more power than opinions, which the image above shows. Facts are represented by the huge "FACTS" cannon. However, opinions are written in tiny letters on a revolver held by a short person. This man seems weak and even needs a step ladder to be able to come face to face with the cannon. Moreover, the "OPINION" pistol which is fired only fires a white flag, as if to symbolise surrender to the cannon. This cannon seems more dangerous than the pistol since there is a lit fuse on top, showing that it will soon destroy the man holding the "OPINIONS" pistol.

I agree with this image to a certain degree. Facts constitute a huge part of this world, and the personal opinions are usually only valued when they are based on facts. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. had very important thoughts and statements about racism and how it was a decaying factor of the world. While his opinions were valued and respected by many people, it remains true that they were based on facts about racism and discrimination.

My opinion is that we don't have a choice whether to like facts or not. Personal opinions have perpetual existence since imagination within human minds will exist forever. This is the source of opinions. However, facts surround us no matter what simply because any individual thought or opinion can be traced back down enough to concrete details.

What is an A and what is its relationship to Success?

I think as students, we can't help but be drawn to the A. It's sort of similar to how a dog can't resist a treat, since it's such a great thing to have. That doesn't mean that we need it, though, just like how the dog can still live off of just eating nasty canned dog food. So that "nasty canned dog food" for us is an F, or whatever the grade you consider a fail is by your own personal standards. And while you can be successful in so many different ways that grades seem insignificant when comparing all of them, you also have to take into consideration how many of these ways can not be applied to a single person. For example, many people who have made money off of technology such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were only able to do it because they had a genuine interest in technology and were extremely bright. Not all of us have these qualities, and this example can be used in all areas where success was achieved.

So that is why I think that depending on what area you want to succeed in, it will also becoming a limiting factor towards your success. The professions that you are not interested in will be unable to you, and that subtracts from the total number of ways that you can success. I consider the total nombuer to be countless as a whole but very limited when looking at it for an individual simply because you can not be interested in everything. The way this ties into grades is in the discovery of what your interests are, and also the degree to which they actually help. Having good grades allows you to go to better schools and study what you desire to study. If I wanted to become a writer and had good grades in Literature, I may be able to go to a nice school and study this. However, if I have bad grades and don't go to college, I would have to start without the knowledge college would have provided. That doesn't necessarily mean that success is completely impossible, but it does make it much more difficult.

The reason why I think grades is also the discovery of your interests is because you don't know what you want to study and what you are skilled in at first. All students go to primary school without knowing anything about what they want to study. However, by going to high school and choosing your classes for the first time, you can choose these things and decide what kind of profession you would like to go in. If your grades are high for a certain class, you will discover that you are talented at that subject.

All of my observations were only for a being successful in your career. There are so many other ways of being successful, such as being rich and having a happy family. However, I found that those are much more difficult to tie in with grades since they have more moral value, so I only wrote about this single definition of success.

Suggestion for the Haiku Page

We were told in class to think of something that could be added to the Haiku ToK page. My opinion is that it would be nice to have a puzzle on the first page. This would be like the ones we did in class where we would ask a question one at a time. People seemed to be very active in these conversations. Of course, the drawback is that if we do it alone, there is no one that knows the answer to check if you are correct. You can just look at the answer after you give up or can not think of anymore questions in this case.

Optical Illusions

We looked at optical illusions in class for a few periods. One of my favourite ones was this sign. It seems like "Paris in the spring" if you read it quickly. However, when you read it one word at a time, you can see that the sign actually reads, "Paris in the the spring." I think that this was one of the examples where we can see a difference in perception through thought processes. When I saw this in class, I only saw Paris in the spring and could not spot the difference. However, Floruen and some other people immediately spotted that there was a repetition of the word "the." I think that the thought process of these people worked in a multi-faceted way, in that they see something and perceive it in small, individual parts. However, I saw this and thought of it as a whole. This might show that my thought processes work in a large, singular way.

TED Talk About Memory

How Shared Knowledge is Formed

This is a diagram of an enzyme. Enzymes are shaped to fit with substrates, sort of like how a puzzle piece in a puzzle set can only be put into a certain slot in order to create the desired image.

I believe that this diagram can be used to represent how shared knowledge is formed on a large scale. The different bits of personal knowledge that exists within a community all are distinct and have different traits, much like how the diagram shows distinctive patterns for the two different shapes. However, these all fit together very well, since these are the areas of knowledge where people agree upon. So, when all of these bits and pieces of personal knowledge that are agreed upon are put together, shared knowledge is the result.

How Personal Knowledge Fits Into Shared Knowledge

I like to think of this as an accurate diagram for the individual's knowledge. The inner circle is his/her own personal knowledge, and the outer circle is the shared knowledge that that person share's with others. Bits of the personal knowledge are all shared with many different people, which is why it is entirely inside of the large circle. If the shared knowledge was only between two individuals, it would most likely be a venn diagram instead, since no two people can know exactly the same things.

Personal Knowledge and Shared Knowledge

Personal knowledge is different for everyone, since no one can live the exact same way as another person. So, my personal knowledge after having lived for 15 years which consists of heavy metal, report cards, parties, and many other things, will never be identical to another person's personal knowledge. However, the overlaps that can form, although they are never complete, are the small spaces where shared knowledge exists. I don't think that shared knowledge has to be shared by many people; even two people knowing the same thing would count for my personal definition of shared knowledge. So, if I meet someone who came from Toronto, then we would be able to have some shared knowledge about Toronto.

Since shared knowledge is the collection of the opinions and observations of two or more people that agree on that subject, it is sometimes assumed for fact. This is completely wrong. What if I agreed with someone else that heavy metal is a great music genre that relieves my stress, but a million other people disagreed and thought that it wasn't even music and was just a sweaty dude head banging and screaming into a microphone? That is an obvious clash of opinions, and neither one is correct; it is simply that many different forms of knowledge can exist, which is where bias and personal opinions come from.

Changing Memories

I think that sometimes, our minds can trick us and tweak our memories. It is done little by little so that we don't know at first, but the ending product of our memories becomes much more different than what it really was. A lot of people say that they want to go back to the past and live in a different time, with the thought that there were no problems in those days, or that they were insignificant enough to not matter at all. I disagree with this, even though I am one of these people myself. I'm only 15, and yet I still want to go back to when I was 7 to re-experience the few golden years that I spent in Canada. Since I was in elementary school, I think that whatever issues I had back then would be tiny in comparison to what I have now, and that may be true. But what I, and most people who have similar thoughts, forget, is that those problems still took up the same amount of my life as the problems that I have today are. If having to sleep at 10 PM and multiplication were the problems that I faced as a seven year-old, then not being able to sleep at 10 PM and logarithmic functions are the problems that I face today. Yes, the seven year-old's problems may seem easier, but, in essence, they are the same.

What I'm trying to say is that if our lives have always had problems, and running away from the current ones into a past self won't solve them, since there were problems in those times, as well. It's just that our perception of these events have changed so that our memories of the past now seem like it was a time of  only bliss and heaven, when really, it wasn't.

Why Should We Care How Memory Functions?

I believe that we should care how memory functions, because it is the only way that we can truly hold on to our past. You can take pictures and look at them in the future, but memory is what really allows you to look back on your life. This is important since your past actions and words dictate how you have lived your life until a certain point and also how you have reached that point. If you do not hold onto your memory, then life would just be a continuous infinity of repetitious events, since you would not remember what you have done and just repeat that same thing again.

So, I believe that memory is a crucial part of our lives that must function in order to keep a constant grasp on our pasts.

Connection with IBH Literature

In IBH Literature, I am currently reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and I found that I could make many connections with the story and our class discussions. The main character, Chief, is schizophrenic, so his memory and perception of the events that happen around him is greatly altered by his illness. When Chief's schizophrenia acts up, he refers to it as the "fog machine": everything and everyone is covered in the fog. Although it is a metaphorical fog, for Chief, it could be seen as a way where his perception is affected. He is partially blinded by this fog and because of this, he sees his surroundings in a different way from what they really are. For example, in his psychopathic ward, he once saw the entire building covered in machines, knives, and murder. Although the ward was a terrible place to be in, it was obviously not a place where murder occurred. However, in the eyes of Chief, he perceived it as so, since the "fog" had affected him at the time.

Memory is also a big part of the story, as flashbacks to Chief's past are mentioned many times. He was the son of a Native American chief, which is why he is called Chief as well. However, unlike with the fog, his memories seem to be unaffected by his illness. He can clearly remember certain events of his past, such as a government visit to his father, where Native American property was sought after. This perhaps shows how he may treasure his past more than his present, since he holds a tight grasp over this compared to his present.